Tinker, Tailor, Spartan, Spy Chapter 1
Just my personal little take on the origins of Spartan Jameson Locke, structured around the general story points we've been given. It will consist of five parts all at different points in Locke's life. Hope you enjoy!
"Jamie?"
I'd heard her coming up the stairs. I'd known it was her from the way she didn't step on the one step that groaned when you stood on it. If it had been the matron, or Dr. Archer, I'd have hidden by now. Instead, I just kept laying here, on my bed, staring at the ceiling.
The door creaked as she nudged it open, peering into the gloom of the wood-panelled dormitory. Rows upon rows of small single beds filled the long room, the only light being a single shaft of evening light filtering in through the skylight in the middle of the room. It was enough. She saw me, the little six-year-old black boy skulking in the semi-dark.
"Jamie!" She cried out, or would have if her tone hadn't been hushed. "Jamie, the matron called everyone down for dinner five minutes ago, aren't you coming?"
"Not hungry." I murmured. She sighed, and walked over to my bed, sitting down by my feet.
"Come on, Jamie, you've got to eat." I didn't respond. She tried shaking my foot. "Jamie..." I still didn't do anything. She sighed again. "Jamie, look at me."
She'd never really been assertive with me before, so I turned my head a fraction to look at her.
Lucy Paver. Twenty years old. Round brown eyes that gave away her Indian heritage, light brown skin, hair obscured by a faded pink patterned scarf that went down to her shoulders. Usually, she was a meek young woman, happy to be bossed around, doing any odd job asked of her by her superiors at the orphanage, but now her gaze was persistent.
"Jamie, I know you're upset, but you have to eat. If you don't, you're just going to feel worse."
I held her gaze for a moment, then went back to looking at the ceiling. Her hand went to clasp mine as it lay, motionless, by my side.
"Jamie, please. Just... Try not to think about it..."
"I want to think about it." She seemed a little shocked. Her grip loosened slightly.
"Why?"
"I don't want to forget anything."
"But... Jamie-"
"I want to remember everything. Dr. Archer said I probably won't get to go back home ever again, and even if I did, it'd be really different, so I want to remember it." She smiled at me then. A sad, sad smile.
"...Why don't you tell me about it, then? Your home?" I didn't say anything for another moment. She probably would have given up and left soon enough if Id kept at it, but I gave in, sat up against the headboard and started talking in that slow, blurred drone of the child.
"...We had a house. It was nice, we had a kitchen, and a bathroom, and I had my own bedroom. It was really big, like, half the size of the dining room."
"That's big."
"Yeah. Mommy and daddy had a bigger room, though. It was right next to mine, so I could go and sleep there if I had a nightmare. Sometimes, though, daddy would wake up and take me outside, and we'd lie down on the grass and count the moons."
"How many moons were there?"
"Four. Sometimes it looked like there was more because of the sea, but you could tell they weren't real because they were greeny-looking. Daddy said that he'd been on two of the real moons, but he didn't tell me which ones."
"That sounds cool."
"Yeah. Then we'd go back to bed and wake up in the morning and he'd make all of us pancakes for breakfast. Then I'd have to go to school, and mommy would have to go to work, and then I'd come home and play." I stopped for a second.
"But I know that part. That's not the part I have to try to remember." She blinked.
"What do you have to try to remember?"
"The last bit. The different bit." She froze. "The bit where everything was on fire." She was clearly uncomfortable, but let me continue. "There were these big purple ships in the sky, and daddy said that we had to go now because they weren't friendly and that they were going to hurt us. We had to run to the square, and there were loads of little green ships taking people away, and we had to try and get to one. We got to one but the man said there was only room for one more and mommy said that I had to go alone for a while, and that they loved me." I was silent again, for longer this time. "Then, the big purple ships started shooting at the ground, and my ship took off, and mommy and daddy were- Were-" I'd started to sniff, breaking my flow, tears welling in my eyes, and before I knew it, Lucy's arms were around me, her voice soothing me.
"Hey, hey, it's alright, you're alright..." I sniffed again, wiping the tears away before they could fall.
"They're dead." I said, with gravity unbecoming of my age. "That's why I'm in here, in an orphanage. And I want to remember that."
"Why?" She whispered, her arms wrapped around me.
"So I won't ever think they're ever coming back and be sad about it when they don't. Because they never will."
Neither of us said anything for a while. I continued sobbing into her shoulder.
"Hey, Jamie. You want to hear about where I grew up?"
"...Yes please."
XXXXXXXXXXXX
I went to bed hungry that night. But I didn't care. I had far too much to think about. Lucy had told me about her home, a big city in the outer colonies. She'd lived there with her dad in a small flat, and had got out of there the moment her dad had thought their planet might be next. They'd moved from planet to planet, hitching rides to get as far into the inner colonies as possible, stopping to work and make money for the next trip. She'd been running for years, and had said that it made her feel terrible, alone and powerless.
She said she couldn't imagine how I felt. Truth be told, I was having trouble myself. After she had to leave to do the matron's bidding, I settled back into position, and got back to thinking. Thinking and remembering. The other boys in the orphanage soon came upstairs with full stomachs, some energetic or violent, others morose. It was easy to tell which ones had been lied to and which hadn't.
I lay there, like the eye of the hurricane, lost in memories. The takeoff in the Pelican. Me, pressed to the hatch window by the pressure of the other bodies around me, unable to turn away. I watched my mother and father recede, their eyes never leaving mine, their hands joined. I watched the CCS-class Covenant battlecruiser manoeuvre slowly into place above the town I called home. I watched the glassing beam charge. I watched the column of plasma and death descend, and wipe away every trace of my old life, leaving nothing but smooth, luminescent scars of grey glass behind. I watched the last two Pelicans behind us fall out of the sky and in turn be cauterised. It was all gone. Mom, dad, our home, everything I had ever known.
I cried myself to sleep that night. After that, no more tears came. No more thinking or remembering was needed.
The Covenant had burned it into my memory forever.